Duke Nukem Forever is a 15-year-old game…not kidding. Beginning with planning and development as far back as the fall of 1996, Duke Nukem is finally here in June of 2011. What took so long you might ask? Well, it seems to be ambition. If you were to go to the internet and search for Duke Nukem Forever trailers as far back as 1998 you would come across several different gameplay videos and screenshots. If not, check out the Duke Nukem 3D release on Xbox Live Arcade since it features some of these same classic screenshots. Now, to say ambition was what held this game back would be a lie. 3D Realms had a lot of ideas on the table, and many of these translated into a mishmash of unfinished thoughts. Just look at the final build of DNF. It lacks any great ambition, desire, or even quality. It is not a great game and it is very far from it, but that is not to say it does not have some quality.

The plot of Duke Nukem Forever kicks off with a bang and it just goes down from there. To be honest, it never really feels like DNF ever has a story. It is just Duke running around, shooting pigs, staring at women, and cussing a lot. But to be honest that is what Duke Nukem is all about. As far as level and story design, you start out in Las Vegas and travel through the desert on your way to the Hoover Dam. Outside of a lot of browns and greys, expect nothing else. The story is about the same as the level design, very plain and very short. You are out to save the babes from the aliens, nothing more, nothing less…that is the entire plot of Duke Nukem Forever.

Character wise you have Duke, the General, and the President, as well as the Holsom Twins (two beautiful girls who rock Duke’s world). You have a few people you run across and then your pig cops and aliens. Duke is kind of boring, he is the same chauvinistic guy he was 15 years ago, and he has the same dialog. Ranging from the classic “Hail to the King, Baby” all the way to the short one liners like “I’m from Las Vegas and I say kill ‘em all.”

Gameplay is exactly what you would expect from Duke Nukem. DNF has the same arcade style shooting of the mid 90’s. You find yourself in big spaces with few enemies, each of which is fairly powerful and aggressive. They run right at you, they shoot you faster than you can think sometimes, yet they are the easiest things to kill. If you remember how to circle strafe, hide behind walls, and all of the other arcade shooter techniques you will find this game a breeze. I played it on normal, and it was one of the easiest games I have ever played. Outside of shooting, there are driving scenes made up of the same thing over and over. You drive a little, hit a big jump, run over the bad guys, and then run out of fuel. Once you run out of fuel, you approach a building, kill some bad guys, and then grab the fuel, refill and continue on. You have a few platforming levels in which you play as mini Duke, and you have a voice that sounds like you just sucked down some helium. They are fairly easy, as the hardest one consists of you jumping over electric water with the help of a few boxes.

DNF takes some great stabs at current and older games. The companion cube and Christian Bale parody come to mind here. Early on in the game you find yourself hearing a rant from a person who says things like “we are through professionally.” If you recollect the Christian Bale rant from a few years back, you will know exactly what they are making fun of here. Later on there is an achievement for unlocking a closet, this requires you to find a barrel with a heart on it (similar to the heart decorated companion cube found in Portal). Outside of these few funny moments, you realize DNF is missing the boat on all the humor that was Duke Nukem.

The multiplayer aspect of DNF is fairly broken. Some matches you can find a great quality, but typically you will get a lot of lag, framerates dropping so low that it looks as if the game is crashing, and hit detection that would make even the best first person shooter players scream. But, then again, it is Duke and this game was not made with the same auto-aim FPS players of this generation in mind. Because at the heart of DNF is still the same exact game they started in 1996. However, there are some fantastic moments in DNF multiplayer matches. I often found myself remembering the late nights at friend’s houses on their Nintendo 64’s killing each other and laughing at Duke’s sayings. These moments are what truly make the multiplayer shine, and it is the definitive savior of the entire Duke Nukem Forever package.

While DNF could be a great game, and with Gearbox Software already scheduling the release of DLC for the future of the game, you should expect some fixes as well as a lot more. Some tweaks to the visuals, some multiplayer fixes, and quicker load times would please a lot of critics of the game. That being said, most of the major issues people have will not be fixed by a few patches. What we can hope for is that Gearbox finds it in their hearts to make a better, proper sequel to Duke Nukem 3D. Trust me, DNF is not as bad as Haze, nor was it as heartbreaking as Homefront, but DNF is not worth $60. If you are just an everyday gamer who loves FPS’s then go out and buy Battlefield Bad Company 2 or Halo: Reach. If you absolutely love Duke Nukem, and have since the DN3D days, then buy this game. It is the same thing you loved in the past; just remember that it is not supposed to be serious. Duke Nukem has never been serious, and the gaming world just cannot handle that today. Unfortunately, and it breaks my heart to say this, but Duke Nukem as we know it should be stopped here. Gearbox needs to find a way to implement future games with Duke-esque characters, or completely start a Duke game from scratch. However, we need to remember that this is 3D Realms baby, not Gearbox’s. Gearbox just saw the game finish, and we saw what a quick job of script writing (Triptych did it in a few months) can do to a game. Stay clear of this game unless you love it, because Duke Nukem Forever gets 6 out of 10.

Brink
A name of a game can say a lot. Just look at Duke Nukem Forever, that game took forever to come out, and fact of the matter is…it is still not complete. Or, take a game like Madden. It is a great game named after the long time announcer and coach John Madden. Similar to the man, the game needs more competition. John Madden didn’t become a bad coach or announcer; other people just rose to the top. The same comes with Brink. Brink is a solid game that is on the brink of becoming something amazing. It is a first person shooter with RPG elements similar to Borderlands but without the adventure elements. What Brink does is trying to blur the line between online multiplayer and single player campaigns. Every game seems to encourage drop in/drop out co-op, but not all of them make you feel as if you need it to finish the game.
The gameplay of Brink lacks a lot of polish. What it does right in one area, it does wrong in another. While Splash Damage did a fantastic job in programming enemy AI, they completely missed the boat in teammate AI. Opponents are strong and try to flank you; they strategically attack objectives and do so in groups and not individually. Your teammates do the complete opposite. You will often notice many of them standing around, they will attack objectives as individuals, and you never feel as if you have a teammate or even a team. On top of this, your team as well as you will die after being shot one to two times while your enemy AI takes one to two clips of ammo to kill. The entire game is plagued by this false sense of difficulty and makes it completely obvious that Splash Damage intended for Brink to be solely played as a multiplayer game.
Brink throws you in to a story already in progress and forces you to choose which side to fight for. You can be a security member or a resistance member. The truth is your decision is based on a short video that tries to explain this fight over The Ark. The Ark is a manufactured town built off of the west coast of America. The problem is they do not explain why the resistance wants to leave The Ark, they just tell you that they are trying to leave and the security does not want you to. Once you have made the decision though, it is just a click of a button to switch sides. There is no reward for choosing either side, it is just your default setting for how you play the game and how your character appears.
Now the story does not go anywhere. Each mission is essentially the same. You capture a point, blow something up, and then escort something to another location. Then, when you play on the security side they make you defend almost everything. Essentially though each side plays the same, and the short cut scenes are filled with one person complaining about the mission and one person saying why it is important. These scenes do nothing to improve the story or make it more entertaining and fill the void where a loading screen would typically be.
The graphics of Brink seem to be the best part. It looks very pretty in some of the early cut scenes with a bright blue sky and crystal clear water in the background. The character models are longer than normal and seem to have been stretched out. The closest comparison that comes to mind is the art style found in Team Fortress 2. Unfortunately most of the levels are dark with a lot of browns and greys. This really disappointed me because it felt as if Brink’s opening cut scenes really showed the potential for something great. There are not a lot of graphical hiccups in Brink and the frame rate stays smooth and consistent for even the most graphically demanding scenes.
Multiplayer in Brink consists of two kinds, Co-op play and versus. Each of these modes take place through the same campaign you play offline so the game is not any different. It would have been nice to see some different objectives for online. This is still where the game takes the cake and can be the most enjoyable part. However the game still fills open slots with bots that take over the game and completely ruin the experience.
While Brink can be extremely exciting and enjoyable it suffers in so many areas. Firstly the AI bots are worthless on your side and the opposition is incredibly difficult. The game forces you to fight the other team by yourself and even though you might be able to control a large portion of the match, the last two minutes of each objective is almost unbearable. You end up surrounded by the entire team, you die in one to two shots, and you run out of ammo just trying to kill a single opponent. The same thing happens in multiplayer due to many of the slots being filled by bots. The game runs smooth, the challenges are a good adventure and overall the game is a good challenge. You can level up and change certain perks to your player as well as their appearance. For those of you who like achievements or trophies, this game will take about 2-3 full days to get most of them. If you only play online, it should be easy to get every single achievement in a period of two days. Overall Brink brings a new twist to the genre and it could be a lot better than it is. If you have a lot of friends who own this game and play it regularly, this is an excellent pickup. They intended you to play with friends and enjoy this as a community and not an individual. If you need something comparable to this, just think of the PlayStation exclusive MAG. Both games are better if you have a group or team to play with. Brink gets 7.5 out of 10.

Quick Hits:
Gameplay: Fluid play. Brings new ideas to the table. Can be overwhelming and extremely frustrating.
Story: Weak and makes you start in the middle of it without a lot of background.
Online: Heart and soul of the game, and the only way it is intended to be played.
Graphics: Smooth, and very good looking. Too many dark levels. Characters similar to TF2.